General Health

In general most of us are unfit, we aren't alonbe when we look in the mirror and we think to ourselves "damn i wish i could lose this meat". Well if you are one of these people who say this don't you think it's time you did something? You never gain unless you work towards your goal! Perhaps you have tried to lose weight in the past but gave up because results were slow? Unfortunately losing weight is tough but that does not mean it's impossible.

This summer, i bet that not alot of you can honestly say you have been consistent in doing daily exercise. Well if you haven't then you need to get the killing instinct. You need to lose weight and by doing so your life will be a whole lot better. Now i'm not saying go crazy and join a gym, no! i'm saying get the jogging gear on and have a 10-15 minute run a day. Believe me when i say this helps, but also note that i have only said help, not cure! We have to do alot of exercise and our general health is controlled by how much exercise we do.

So how do we maintain our good health? There's more than just exercise that gives us a good health but i would use exercise and what i am about to tell you together. Healthy eating....yes, healthy eating! We need to eat healthily otherwise we won't have the energy and stamina to do the exercise. 5 A DAY, how many of you can honestly say you have had 5 fruit and veg a day? I for one can't say i have consistenly ate 5 a day, i try and by try i mean i actually think about my meals and how i can add the 5 a day to my meals. A banana, apple, orange, sweetcorn, broccoli. These foods don't take long to eat or prepare, there are no excuses why you shouldn't eat these kinds of food.

I can guarantee that if you asked a doctor what you should do to stay healthy that the doctor will say exercise and healthy eating, and doctors are there for a reason, we should respect their judgement in what we should do to stay healthy, they have worked hard for their title of DR. and we should respect this and take their advice.

How do we keep involved in daily exercise?

Firstly, if you are an old browser of this blog then you will know i have not posted for a very long time well at least a couple of months, i just have had less time and well there is not much reward from writing a blog unless it is well known, unfortunately, this blog is not so i llost a bit of interest. But i'm back :D

Anyway back to the question, one of my friends has recently stopped doing exercise and doing more dieting, taking diets like the atkins diet and stuff. This annoyed me because i am not fond of diets, when we do a diet we often do lose weight and body fat but it is only short term. You see when we diet, after we are successfull (excuse my spelling if it is wrong ;)) we tend to go back to our old ways of binging thinking everything is allright but it's not because we end up putting more weight on after the diet has finished.

Exercise is the best way to keep healthy by far! But exercise can be strenous and hard to keep up with. This is why i am making this post. Keeping involved in daily exercise is hard but rewarding. We can use this fact to help us keep involved, if we set ourselves goals e.g. lose 2 stone by january 2009. then we can feel more rewarded when we reach these goals because we have acheived something and psychologically we are proud of ourselves, and more confident with the way we look.

You're probably reading this thinking i've tried that but i gave up, and i don't blame you if this is true but i'm not done ;). We need to keep motivated, so we can have an image in our heads of what we will look and feel like after we have acheived our goals. For example if we have a friend that we think is in good shape we can think to ourselves, i want to look like that, if we do this we want to do something about our weight. We want to do ourselves good which keeps us motivated.

Is there anyone or anything that inspires you to do stuff? or have you been inspired by something in the past? Use what you were inspired by to reach our goal. Regular exercise eventually beats our fat intake, but i'm here to help you make feeling good feel better, i'm trying to make losing weight and keeping healthy sound good.

Exercise is anything from walking to work to playing rugby, it's really that simple. I want you- the readers- to make yourselves goals by the end of the week, whether it be doing a bit of exercise once a day or if it is eating less fatty foods and then i want you to make a goal for the week after and then again and then again. Get into a constant routine of exercising every day, if you want to stay healthy, do exercise, it really is that simple.

Now do it starting now, or after work, but you must never say to yourself i will do it later. Because if we say that we are telling ourselves iit's not important when it is, it really is so go do it and make not me but yourselves proud!

p.s i will continue to make more frequent posts but you get my information for free and this isn't that rewarding so i would like to ask you to click on one of the google adverts to the right of the screen or use the google search at the top of this page. You don't have to do much just stay on the advertisements website for 5 seconds. I will appreciate it very much if you do! Good luck with the exercise, f you have any questions don't be scared to leave a comment remember it is anonymous and i don't bite :)

Bingination...

Ok firstly, i have recently broken my arm so have not been able to post but i am back.....for now :)

Right bingination? sounds like binging right? well it is but i think it sounds better:) Anyway i have seen lots of cases where my friends or family have said to me "Adam, what's going on i have been dieting correctly and doing exercises like you said but i'm not getting any thinner?" Well yes my name is Adam but that's not the point. This friend of mine told me this and i told him he has not been doing it right and i gave some big explanation on what he done wrong, this involved something i like to call bingination!

So yes this bingination is more than just nation on the end of a word. I believe that once you binge you don't stop and you become binginised. You binge more than you should. Yes it is good to have a reward once in a while but only if you deserve it.

I have some tips for you, all of the tips i give you may not seem like they are directly intertwined with binging but they all are. Do not weigh yourself everyday, yes the body fluctuates 2-5 pounds a day so i advise you weigh yourself once a week at the same time and with no clothes on.

Rewarding yourself is good, when i say reward yourself i mean have a nice tasty snack BUT not too often! I think that although in the end there is the reward of being healthy there are no huge changes which makes you depressed leading to bingination.

Never miss a workout, even if you are tired it is important you allways do your workout. Why? Well mentally if we don't do something and nothing bad happens we think we can miss it again. So allways do your workout no matter what unless seriously injured there is no excuse! :)

A great way to start doing exercise and to challenge yourself is to do this....

example
you start with 10 pressups, the next day you do 12 or 15 and so on, this will challenge yourself and as humans we love competition and thrive on trying to beat our personal best or another record.

Stuck for ideas? Well i will tell you my workout shall i?

well before i broke my arm i started by walking 1-3 miles everyday, i played football 5-7 hours a week, i did things like press ups and stuff, i did 30 press ups a day and also 50 sit ups a day, i did more like jogging a few miles a week on occasion, not many but u tried.

now this maybe a bit extreme but adapt it to you, you could start with 1 mile a day (not including walking around the office i mean dedicating time) 3 hours of football (or another pasttime a week) 10 pressups, 10 situps or something like that.

Also eat healthily, this is vital so you do not get as tired or overweork

Exercise for the disabled!

On monday i unfortunately broke my arm playing football so it has restricted me to what i can do (this is also the reason for my late post). So i was thinking, how do injured or disabled people stay fit? I mean i can't play football for at least 6 weeks and that is the main sport i do, so how?

Well i came up with many things and thought i should tell you to the best of my ability using one hand :).

So sports, what sports can you do if disabled or injured. Well walking is good. Or anything that involves moving your uninjured limbs. This can be the best way to keep used to exercise because when you are injured you tend not to exercise and therefore you aren't used to exercise.

Also the right foods are needed, when inured more calories should be consumed or if broken bones calcium and vitamin c will help alot. And for some reason.....lots of carrots help!

Moving joints everyday should help to rreduce stifness so it is could for when you return to full fitness, obviously you should not try to move your injured part.

I try to do alot of walking to just keep the strength in my legs and so i can run around after i have healed. Some of you may not have space to walk but if you go to the gym you can keep the running machine on a low setting so youy can walk slowly. Flexing the back muscles is very good and can keep you flexible.

If you are paralised, get some ideas from the paralympics, they work hard and manage to keep a good posture. They tone their muscles well and use special machines to keep fit.

Eating the right foods is vital because your body needs to heal but you must make sure you eat enough calories to balance how much you eat with how much you do. The right amount of nutrients and minerals is vital for how quickly you heal and hhow you keep a good physical body. Lots of fruit and veg is good and can help stop hunger.

Also remember when you feel hungry most of the time it is actually being thirsty, so drink plenty of water and liquids!

Exercise

Yes a subject i have spoken of before. But how do you maximise the potential of exercising? How do you keep on plugging away? There are several answers for these questions and everyone will tell you differently.

The most simple answer is water. If you can stay well hydrated while doing exercises you should be able to exercise for that little bit longer. Water is extremely important for not only heath but many other things.

So when should we drink water? Well we should usually drink water inbetween meals so we do not over-dilute our food. It is important to drink fresh, pure water. If we can have a lot of water in our system, then this is better for our muscles as they get more hydration and therefore they work better.

Doctors tell us that we should drink 8 glasses of water a day. This can be hard and i know that i don't! But i do drink a sufficient amount so that i keep hydrated while exercising. Exercising is all about burning off fat that is not needed or wanted, which is why we want to exercise for longer.

Exercising can be tough at times, you may have an injury or maybe you find it hard to sustain a consistent daily exercise. But to be healthy you don't have to be one of these people who go to the gym everyday! You can start slow, joining a gym can be good and i advise it because everyone who is in there is in for more or less the same reason. So there is more social activity and you can have fun while you exercise.

But start slow and you should be fine, perhaps start to walk to work? Or walk up to the shop to get your shopping, perhaps even start cycling. Those are only a few ideas of what you could do, if you start slow you minimise the risk of pulling a muscle or straining yourself.

Exercising doesn't have to be done on your own, go for a walk with family or friends. It can be fun and rewarding at the same time. Noone likes the idea of having to exercise but if it is necessary you might aswell have fun at the same time!

Food for life....

So food....

So why do we need food? It may seem obvious to live, but it's alot deeper than that and i think it is important to know if you are trying to keep fit. After reading this post you will be able to look in your cupboards and say "right i need that", you'd be surprised if you went through your cupboards and picked out the foods that you actually need, and how much would be left that isn't needed, we call these 'snacks' nothing wrong with them but too many can lead to obesity and then from that to life threatening diseases. (and when i say snacks i think you know what i mean :))

Believe it or not some fats are good for us! When we hear the term fat we usually assosiate it with obesity, weight, we never assosiate it with healthy terms. Some fats are vital for healthy bodily functions, but why? Well fats are mainly found in things like meat, fish, and plants and we need fats because they play an important part of making all cell membranes and play a vital role in absorbing fat-soluble vitamins (A,D,E, and K). Fat gives us body insulation and also acts as a source of energy.

That is only one of the reasons we need food, but other reasons involve minerals, vitamins, salts, sugars, these all come from foods.

So a topic that i think i need to go into with depth is energy! I've spoken alot about energy in the past posts but that is because it is so important to balance energy with the amount of exercise you do! Anyway we can calculate our energy requirements! Yes we can, this is an essential tool in my opinion. Our requirements depend on alot of factors such as age, gender, whether we are still growing, pregnancy, menstruation and much more. Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is a measure of how much energy you need for essential functions like breathing and heart rate. BMR is highest in younger people and starts to decrease after the age of 10. Because of greater muscle mass, men generally have a higher BMR, therefore men must intake a higher amount of calories than woman. Following so far? Elderly people have a decline in muscle mass so they tend to need less calories than the younger generation.

A few examples of maintenance calorie requirements for different activities for adults are listed below:

• Sedentary or bedbound people:11.5cal per 450g (1lb) of body weight per day.
• People who only do light activities:13.5cal per 450g (1lb) of body weight per day.
• People doing moderate activities:16cal per 450g (1lb) of body weight per day.
• People doing vigorous exercise such as athletes or manual laborers or patients recovering from injury:18cal per 450g (1lb) of body weight per day.

How we get nutriets....

Take a look at what you eat on an average day and you will probably see a variety of foods from all food groups. You probably get a wide range of nutrients from the five different food groups. This is what your nutrient intake is all about.

The energy you obtain from food is measured in calories. However since one calorie is almost nothing we tend to speak in kilocalorie (kcal). 1 kcal = 1000 cal. Also you may see the term kilojoules (kj) this is another way of measuring energy and can be sometimes seen on the food label next to the caloric value. 1kcal = 4.184kj. So you can see energy can be quite complicated at times and sometimes annoying to understand i wouldn't blame you if you read over this paragraph once or twince to understand.

Each type of nutrient produces a certain amount of energy:

• 100g protein:400cal
• 100g carbohydrates:400cal
• 100g fat:900cal

Please feel free to ask any questions on this topic by leaving a comment after this post!

Thank you!

Assessing your health and lifestyle...

First of all i would like to say sorry for my absense in posting, i have ill recently but am now making a recovery :)

So back on topic....

If you are new to the whole 'lose some weight' or 'keep healthy' process then you need to assess yourself. There are lots of elements that come into this for instance, the nutrition and energy balance, snaking, and the optinum number of meals a day are just some of what comes into this.

So this nutrition-energy balance, what is it all about? 'you are what you eat' is a great phrase that people use but perhaps don't realise how important this phrase is. Everything you eat affects your body's performance and your bodily functions. Ofcourse you nutritional needs vary, but this only affects how you live your life. You need to know your body's needs, this may seem obvious but is oh so important...the connection between diet and health is to grow properly and function normally you need a complete range of nutrients. Including carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fibre, and water, as well as a variety of vitamins and minerals. All of these are not only essential but can improve your state of health!

Ok so you now know all this stuff about nutrients and balancing nutrition and energy. Now is your diet healthy? You have to be honest and sometimes harsh with yourself here. Well if you are....you must assess whether or not you consume enough nutrients. Or even if you consume too much of one nutrient. If so then your body is not functioning at an optimum level!

The food-energy balance is like the nutrition-energy balance, well this is more a sub-category of it but to maintain a healthy weight you must eat well but at the same time you must be using the energy your diet gives you. Let me explain how this works, energy comes from fat, now our body burns fat to give us energy and to make our body burn fat off we exercise. If we don't exercise then that fat that should be burned off is still in our body and will take physical action e.g. bigger belly, tiring easily, breathlessness, high blood pressure. I take it you don't want this or you may even have this now...so what will it be vibrant good health or all of the above?

So we once again come back to exercise, this is one of my favourite topics (health and lifestyle) because it gives you a real inside look into whether or not your healthy, yes i speak alot about exercise :) but i'm giving you the reasons why you need it, exercise and food are strongly linked and it basically works like this....the more food you eat-the more exercise you do!

Keep fit everyone!